When is Ibn Hbban’s authentication accepted with reference to Islamic sources?

The questioner : He saysThe questioner : When is Ibn Hbban’s authentication accepted with reference to the Islamic sources that discussed this topic?

The Shaykh : This is a problem; he thinksThe questioner : that he speaks on everything! Ibn Hbban has a well-known rule, which is: he authenticates the unknown; he authenticates the one about whom he says, “I do not know him,” and sometimes he says, “I do not know him and I do not know his father.” As I explained in my thesis in response to *Al-Ta'qib al-Hathith* by Shaykh 'Abd Allah al-Habashi al-Harari, when this man came to Damascus and began writing a thesis in response to us, he relied on Ibn Hbban’s authentication to verify some of the hadiths. I clarified his error in this area by citing what al-Hafiz Ibn Hajar al-'Asqalani said in the beginning or introduction of his great book, *Lisan al-Mizan*, and what Ibn 'Abd al-Hadi al-Hanbali, a student of Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah, said in his book *Al-Sarim al-Manki fi al-Radd 'ala al-Subki*. I cited from both regarding authentication, and I mentioned some citations from the book *Al-Thiqat*, which is preserved in our library at al-Dar al-Kutub al-Zahiriyah before the first and second volumes of it were printed. But as the scholars say: every rule has exceptions; meaning, in other words, there is no general rule that has not been specified. For Ibn Hbban, the rule is: “What he uniquely authenticates is unknown,” unless a supporter from scholars known for moderation in authentication comes for it; then it has its known status. But Ibn Hbban sometimes authenticates a man from whom a group of the trustworthy narrated. In this case, it occurs to the researcher, in the case of a specific person who spent his life in this science, that this narrator, from whom a group of the trustworthy narrated, and in what they narrated from him, nothing of the anomalies in the narrations has become apparent, so the researcher himself is reassured that Ibn Hbban’s authentication here has weight. This is something known only to one who has experienced this science. We find that al-Hafiz Ibn Rajab al-Hanbali, and likewise al-Hafiz Ibn Kathir al-Dimashqi, authenticate, or rather give weight to, Ibn Hbban’s authentication of a Tabi'i from whom only one narrator is reported. We find that in many cases they grade the chain of this hadith as good, where the narrator in it is one from whom only one person narrated, and Ibn Hbban authenticated him. Where did they take this from, even though the rule is well known? They observe something that the general scholars do not observe, let alone the students of knowledge, let alone those who imitate them. They observe that among the Tabi'un, lying and fabrication against the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) had not yet spread. This is a fact known to those who study this science. The lower the generation, the more there are those accused of lying and fabrication and the like. This has known reasons. Then they observe another thing: that the Tabi'un had a large share of the memorization that Allah (Mighty and Majestic) had bestowed upon the Companions of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), so that they would transmit to us the hadiths of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) as they heard them. Observing both of these things instills in them the goodness of that hadith. The additional factor is that they test this hadith against the rules and principles of the Shari'ah, and they find it consistent with them, so their hearts are reassured, and they say: this is a good hadith, or a hadith with a good chain, or something similar.
I am saying this as a report, even though I was not as pleased with his action as he was. But if the hadith comes through a narrator whom Ibn Hbban authenticated, and they mentioned a group of trustworthy narrators for him, and these narrators, along with their narration from this narrator, did not narrate from him anything that is criticized; then my heart is reassured to rely on and cite the narration of this one whom Ibn Hbban uniquely authenticated. And we observe here a point that one does not naturally find in the books that were askedThe questioner : to whom we should refer in this issue? Because there are observations that constantly and always occur to the researcher over the ages. Some of them are able to record them, and some are not. Now, if we wanted to research a purely modern scientific topic: how do the scholars judge that a certain narrator is trustworthy? Where did they know this? And how did they judge that a certain narrator is trustworthy, when he is one of the people whose names and identities we have never heard of at all, and they are not like the famous narrators from the Tabi'un and others? How is that?
You will not find the answer written in any book of terminology. But when you delve into the study of this terminology, and especially in their critique of men through authentication and denunciation, it becomes clear to you that his method of authentication is on two paths, or two forms:
The first form: that the authenticating imam is a contemporary of the authenticated man, so he is his companion, his student or his teacher, and he knows him intimately and closely. He testifies that so-and-so is a trustworthy, truthful, and memorizing person. This is the first method, and let us call it the method of companionship, where the narrator, or the critic, or the denouncer, or the authenticator knows the one he is criticizing because he lived with him, or the one he authenticated.
The second method: is that the scholars critique the authentication of a narrator like this first one. Now, when we stand before Ibn Hbban’s authentication of a narrator and we do not have any other authentication before us, but we find that he is not of the type from whom only one person narrated, but we find that a group narrated from him, and these narrators from him are trustworthy; then we are now—thanks, of course, to the efforts of the previous imams—following the same path that the first authenticator took. How did so-and-so authenticate? Because he saw that his hadiths match the hadiths of the trustworthy ones; there is no addition, there is no omission, there is no possible flaw that could strengthen the criticism of this narrator. And in this manner, when one of us thinks about it, he is reassured that Ibn Hbban’s authentication of this specific narrator does not have that status we are accustomed to describing for those whom Ibn Hbban uniquely authenticated. These details are, in reality, observed only by the people of knowledge and specialization. And from this, you can see part of the meaning of what the people of terminology mentioned regarding Imam 'Ali ibn al-Madini; when he was asked how you know the authentic hadith from the weak one? He gave the example of the money changer; he takes a dirham, looks at it, and knows if it is genuine or counterfeit. But if you show it to the general people, they will tell you it is a dirham or a dinar; they do not distinguish the sound genuine coin from the counterfeit. And so says one of the imams of hadith, Yahya ibn al-Madini, that the hadith requires knowledge like the knowledge of distinguishing the adulterated from the sound among dirhams and dinars.
Yes.

The questioner : May Allah reward you with good.